Mastercard to pay out £68 million over fees

Well, it's all kicking off and Mastercard have been ordered to pay Sainsbury's £68 million over excessive fees.

The people at the Competition Appeal Tribunal awarded the damages to the supermarket for "interchange fees", which MasterCard had levied over a six year period.

This means that a host of other retailers will be able to start their own claims against MasterCard, and the cases could total £400 million.

This is slightly different from the case which might get customers compensated. This revolves around an interchange fee which retailers pay every time a customer uses a credit or debit card.

It has been decided by the European Commission that fees of around 0.9% of the value of each card card transaction is too high, and they've now capped that to 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards.

However, the tribunal also said that these fees were not being passed on to customers.

This doesn't harm the other class action suit, where MasterCard are looking at a claim worth £19 billion, which could see consumers getting themselves £400 for excessive charges.

MasterCard said: “While we are disappointed to see liability as part of the finding, we note that in awarding a limited portion of the claimed damages, the court concluded that Sainsbury's did not pass through interchange costs to consumers in the form of higher prices."